


scared that we'll get too close?

by alpacasandravens



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Sharing a Bed, oh no there's only one bed whatever will happen???, soft, with a small side of Pining as well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 06:41:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20305111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacasandravens/pseuds/alpacasandravens
Summary: Prompt from a couple friends: Jonathan blows up his cell in Arkham by accident, and everyone except one (1) idiot is too terrified of him to share a cell for the night.





	scared that we'll get too close?

**Author's Note:**

> this is for zo and damien, thanks for the prompt and encouragement guys!! i had a ton of fun writing this.  
title from Sudden Sky by Crown the Empire because I love that song and can twist that one (1) lyric to seem applicable to this fic

_Bang._

Jonathan found himself flying backwards. Smoke and rubble and sharp fragments of what he suspected used to be the cell toilet flew with him, and he slammed against the opposite wall of the cell. The debris sliced through his thin uniform, leaving small bleeding slits along his arms and chest. Thankfully, his face was protected by his mask, but he shut his eyes tight out of instinct.

Well. That certainly hadn’t been what he wanted to happen. 

In theory, the experiment he had just performed should have created a mild version of his fear toxin, one that wouldn’t cause outright hallucinations. Instead, it should have been perfect for creating an atmosphere of paranoia - hearing footsteps that weren’t there, being convinced of movement out of the corner of the eye, and so on. In practice, he was not working in a sterilized lab setting but out of a toilet clogged with paper towels, and so things were going to be a little off. He just hadn’t expected them to be this much off.

Satisfied he was no longer in danger, Jonathan opened his eyes. He’d been thrown clean across his cell, his back now propped against where his bed should be. His bed, apparently, had flipped sideways, and it was by pure chance he had landed on the bedsprings instead of being impaled where the legs of the cot stuck out into the room. Where his toilet turned laboratory had been was now a large, vaguely smoldering pile of nothing. The walls behind it bore blackened scorch marks.

Outside, a siren began to go off, the loud wails piercing the early morning stillness. 

Things in Arkham were rarely still. All day long, the asylum was a bustle of patients, staff, and even the occasional visitor, even if they were usually police on official business. Some of the inmates were quiet, but most were not, and they yelled or whistled or sang or spoke gibberish long into the night. But in the early hours of the morning, everything was still and silent and for a moment, Jonathan could concentrate.

He hated the noise of the asylum. For years, he’d been a part of that noise, yelling at the scarecrow he saw everywhere he turned to leave him alone. Of course it hadn’t, it couldn’t. It was him. But once he’d learned to accept that, things that lurked in the dark no longer scared him. They were scared of him. He was, at best, annoyed by their presence.

But this morning, he’d ruined the most peaceful time of day by somehow utterly screwing up this experiment, and now he can’t even keep working, as he no longer has any kind of workstation. The cuts on his arms started to sting, and he sighed in irritation. The day was already off to a terrible start.

“Since Mr. Crane has rendered his cell unusable,” the warden said to the gathered inmates with a glare at Jonathan, “he will be needing temporary habitation until it can be restored.”

_Scarecrow_, Jonathan thought, _call me Scarecrow_. On paper, yes, his name was still Jonathan Crane. And sometimes, he didn’t mind being called that. But who he was, who he wanted to be, to these people was the Scarecrow. 

Once, they’d all known. It hadn’t even been long ago - less than a year had passed since he’d led James Gordon through these labyrinthine halls, taunting him over the loudspeaker and bringing him into range of his first disciples. The inmates of Arkham Asylum knew fear, worshipped it, and had proven that night to be willing to use it for Jonathan’s ends. They had known the Scarecrow. But now, this new warden seemed to have forgotten.

“We expect his room to be livable by tomorrow, but until then, we need a volunteer to share their cell with Mr. Crane.”

Jonathan sighed. They could put him in the hospital wing. He knew there were empty beds, and there was even the chance he’d get access to the chemicals in the dead of night, when no one was looking. But of course the inept management wanted him to share a room with another criminally insane patient, as though this would end in anything other than murder.

“Would anyone like to volunteer.” The warden said a second time.

The assembled inmates at least had the grace to look terrified. Maybe the warden had forgotten the Scarecrow, but they hadn’t. They knew what hid behind the mask wasn’t just sick little Jonathan, but fear itself. They knew better than to invite fear into their cells.

The thought made Jonathan smile.

Just as he thought he might escape, that no one would volunteer and he could spend the night somewhere alone, someone raised their hand.

“Mr. Crane is free to share with me.”

Jonathan’s head whipped to search out what imbecile had spoken. The offending inmate had a pleasant smile on his face, and did not appear distressed about sharing his living space in the slightest. Jonathan recognizes him, and rolled his eyes. Of course it would be him.

For some reason, Jervis Tetch held himself to the highest standards of politeness and gentleman-like conduct. How this fit in with his MO of hypnotizing unsuspecting people to help with his schemes, often at the cost of their own lives, was a mystery to Jonathan. Jervis has long since decided he was the Hatter from Alice in Wonderland, which was really just about the least intimidating theme a villain could have picked, in Jonathan’s opinion. Arkham had, for some reason, confiscated all of his hats, so Jervis had made his own out of newspaper, and he continued to meticulously style his hair and clothes every morning, as though it mattered how he looked when the only people who were going to see him were insane or their indifferent guards. Privately, Jonathan thought the man looked generally ridiculous and almost out of place in Arkham.

“Thank you, Mr. Tetch,” the warden said. “An extra bed will be provided immediately.” He left quickly, seemingly desirous to spend as little time among Arkham’s occupants as possible.

Jervis smiled at Jonathan and gave him a small wave. Jonathan scowled back. He didn’t want to deal with Tetch and all his rhyming, talkative idiocy. He just didn’t.

There really was not enough room in Jervis’s cell for another cot. The staff had squeezed it in, shoving it against the wall, but as it was the new cot blocked half the doorway and Jonathan was certain it was a fire hazard. With the amount of riots and general mayhem Arkham had, he didn’t like having half the door blocked. Not that he could leave anyway.

“It’s not much, but it’s home,” Jervis said with an embarrassed laugh. 

Jonathan glared at him. “All the cells are the same.” 

“It’s true, here not much personality can shine through.”

Why wasn’t he scared? Anyone else would be cowering with fear, and yet Jervis had the nerve to act like this. It was infuriating.

Jonathan scowled and turned to walk back to his workstation - or, where it would have been in his own cell. As it was, he stopped abruptly after only a few steps.

“Is something amiss?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? You seem… lost.”

“I’m fine,” Jonathan said, this time with more force behind it. He spoke in a tone that should have guaranteed silence and possibly a good bit of solitude. 

Jervis did not seem to get the memo. “I have some books, if you’d like. Nothing of the more scientific sort, but you’re welcome to take a look.”

Jonathan looked at Jervis’s small makeshift bookshelf. Briefly, he wondered how Jervis had even gotten books in here. He certainly hadn’t been able to get any. But then again, he realized, Jervis’s hypnosis could more than convince the guards to bend certain rules.

Books were one of the things he missed most about being on the outside, aside from the freedom and the lack of the irritating nuisances sometimes known as the other inmates. Still, that didn’t mean he would be reading anything from Jervis’s bookshelf. The man had two copies of Alice in Wonderland - one with the original illustrations and another with full-color pictures - among six or seven other books, none of which Jonathan had heard of but most of which seemed to be other children’s books. One, tucked against the side of the shelf, he was pretty sure was a romance novel. 

He didn’t want to be reading things like this. Fantasy. Tales that existed for no reason other than for fun. He wanted to learn something, to get his hands on his father’s notebooks the GCPD had confiscated. To continue with his experiments, come closer to understanding fear, and making all of Gotham understand its power. So he shook his head.

“No,” he said. Then, for some reason he wasn’t entirely sure of, he added “Thank you.”

More out of boredom than anything else, Jonathan kicked one of the legs of his cot. It was a soft kick with absolutely no force behind it, yet the metal still made a loud scraping noise. 

“That’s odd,” Jervis commented. Jonathan rolled his eyes at him.

He grabbed three of the books from the bookshelf, ignoring Jervis spluttering something about ‘what did he think he was doing with all of those,’ and dropped them on the bed. With a loud metallic screeching, the leg Jonathan had kicked broke in two, and another fell off entirely. The cot slammed to the floor with a bang.

“You’ve gotta be kidding,” Jonathan said, staring at the collapsed bed in disgust.

Jervis’s eye rows knitted together in concern as he said “Well, that’s most unfortunate.”

“So what do you do, normally?” Jervis asked. He somehow managed to have perfect posture even though he was sitting on his cot and leaning against the wall, and it was pretentious.

Jonathan isn’t even annoyed to hear him talk, and that must be a sign of how long he’d been stuck in this cell, because he definitely thought Jervis was annoying. He looked up at him from his seat in the corner of the room.

“Not this.” 

He was currently mentally calculating, factoring in the density of the concrete walls and the fact that the cafeteria spoons were actually plastic sporks, how long it would take him to dig his way out of the walls to freedom. Not that it mattered. Jervis’s cell was on the third floor, so he’d break a leg trying to escape anyway.

“I assumed as much,” Jervis said, and Jonathan could hear the amusement in his voice. “If you could do anything, what would you like to do?”

Jonathan thought for a moment. He didn’t think he’d ever been able to do whatever he wanted. “Within the realm of human possibility?”

Jervis scoffed. “If you could do anything, not if you could choose from a set of things.”

“Hm. Then I suppose I’d like to turn the tables. Lock up the warden and the GCPD in here and make them see how it feels.”

Jervis hummed with what sounded like approval.

“What would you do?” Jonathan asked. He didn’t know why he was asking it. He didn’t care.

“I would travel back in time and meet Lewis Carroll,” Jervis said after a brief period of thought. “Or I would make a million Leslie Thompkinses and I’d make Jim Gordon watch me kill them all.” He said both sentences in the exact same tone of voice, slightly whimsical and above all, innocent. Like he was a kid who wanted to fly.

Despite himself, Jonathan almost laughed. His lips curled into a smile, and he was glad Jervis couldn’t see that under the mask because he would never admit he found Jervis oddly endearing.

“Both good options,” he said, and he thought he successfully sounded just as bored as he’d been before.

Jervis smiled at him, and waited a moment before asking “Why the mask?”

“Why the hats?”

“They’re stylish. Do you not like your face?”

“My mask is stylish.” Jonathan let just enough of a laugh into his voice so Jervis would know he was being mocked. 

“You do pull it off very well, I agree,” Jervis said.

Jonathan was almost stunned into silence. The compliment had sounded so genuine, but it couldn’t be. Absolutely not.

Rather than let Jervis know he’d been caught off guard, he asked “Why the Hatter, though? Why Alice?”

“Why not?”

Jonathan gave him a look. “You must have a reason.”

“Must I? If I must, you must have a reason for your Scarecrow.”

“I have become my fear,” Jonathan shrugged.

“Likewise I have become my imagination.”

“Imagination isn’t the same thing as fear.”

“Isn’t it? Imagination can be great or terrible, and why ever would we fear the unknown if we could not imagine its endless horrid possibilities?”

Jervis might be smarter than he had given him credit for, Jonathan thought, even if his logic was convoluted and nearly impossible to follow.

“What would you see if you were under my fear gas? What would you imagine?”

“That’s an awfully personal question, don’t you think?”

Jonathan raised an eyebrow in a challenge. “Scared of vulnerability?”

“Most people are. It frightens you more than me, I would wager, as you hide so determinedly behind your Scarecrow to avoid it.”

He didn’t know why he didn’t gas Jervis for saying that. Well, he did - he didn’t have any gas on him, as he had no means of making any and any pre-existing vials hadn’t survived the morning’s explosion and subsequent search of the premises. But he wasn’t even tempted to gas Jervis. Distantly, he wondered why.

“I am the Scarecrow,” he insisted.

“And I am the Hatter. But I am also Jervis, and you are also Jonathan.”

“Why do you care?” Jonathan didn’t mean for it to sound defensive, but he couldn’t help it. 

Jervis scooted forward to sit on the edge of the bed. “You interest me.”

“Why?”

“You blew up your toilet in the middle of the night.” Jervis said it so lightly and with such an obvious desire for Jonathan to immediately believe him that he was instantly wary. Jervis wasn’t lying, exactly, but he wasn’t telling the truth either.

“And?”

“And it was interesting.”

Jonathan had never before wished for someone else’s talent. He loved fear, prized it above everything else. But now he found himself wishing he could hypnotize Jervis to tell him the truth. He wanted to know why he was interesting.

The lights in the cell clicked off. Jonathan hadn’t realized it was so late already, but it must be 10pm. Officially time for lights out. He looked at the broken bed in the corner, still futilely standing on two legs, and then back at Jervis. He sighed.

Jervis’s bed was small. All the beds were small in Arkham. Jonathan just hadn’t realized how small before.

He didn’t sleep much. He didn’t like to - he hated his dreams. When he was awake, Jonathan could be useful. After all, there were always experiments to do, fear toxins to test, and so on. Everything working to make Gotham a kingdom of fear. (And the city was so close already, everyone terrified of the next big attack, or killer, or tragedy. All it would take was a push, and it would be his.)

When he slept, the fear that Jonathan thought he’d avoided came back. His dreams were hellscapes, though they were no longer solely populated with the scarecrow. He saw his father, sometimes. Others he saw Jim, happy and just out of reach, and he was never able to drag Jim down into the darkness as he so desperately wanted to. 

He was useless and terrified and angry when he slept. So he didn’t.

But Jervis wouldn’t let him not sleep. Said it wasn’t polite for him to make Jonathan stay up, or something. So here they were, trying to use the same bed, and it was less than pleasant.

Twin beds, as a general rule, aren’t meant for sharing. It’s possible, up to a point - small children can share a twin bed, though it stops working somewhere around seven or eight years old. Jonathan, having not had friends as a small child, had never experienced this more comfortable type of bed-sharing, and so his first time sharing a bed with someone was as an adult, and twin beds simply don’t work that way.

Neither he nor Jervis were exceptionally tall individuals (in fact, they were both on the shorter side), but that didn’t help much. They were still two grown men trying to squeeze onto a very small bed.  
When they finally managed it, Jonathan felt as though he might fall off the side of the bed if the air conditioner turned on too suddenly. He was barely balancing, but it meant he didn’t have to practically cuddle Jervis, which was the only other way they would both fit. He huffed a dissatisfied sigh and stared at the ceiling. This was going to be a long night. 

Even once he was in the bed, Jonathan had never intended to sleep. But somehow, he’d just gotten so bored staring at the darkened ceiling that he’d drifted off without noticing.

He only noticed he’d been sleeping when he jerked awake from a nightmare. He’d been trapped in that closet, with the scarecrow coming closer and closer and he couldn’t move. He couldn’t even scream. The scarecrow had loomed over him, and he’d tried so hard to move but no matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t move a muscle. It had reached out a pointy finger and touched his chest, and he’d finally woken up.

As he lay there, staring at the ceiling and trying to calm down his racing heart, Jonathan noticed two things. One, he had not fallen off of the bed, though by all rights he should have. And two, there really was something on his chest. His leg, too - something was holding it to the cot, pinning his ankle down.

Jonathan wanted to scream. He wanted to bolt out of the cot and curl up in the corner and wait until the lights turned on so he could check every corner of the cell for the scarecrow. He felt the rough burlap of the mask scratch against his face, but he knew the scarecrow wasn’t him right now. It was somewhere else, watching, waiting to strike, perched on his ankle and pressing a sharp claw into his chest.

He reached up and ripped off the mask, dropping it beneath the bed. He had to get it off, away from him. His arm hit something as he removed the mask, something warm that made a soft mumbling noise at the contact. Jonathan sat up, propped on his elbows, and carefully removed his foot from what he still wasn’t entirely certain wasn’t the scarecrow’s grip. 

As the panic from the nightmare started to wear off, Jonathan registered that the thing that had trapped his ankle didn’t look like the scarecrow. It looked like a socked foot. He looked at his lap, where the thing that had been on his chest had fallen when he’d sat up, and sighed. 

It was an arm. Specifically, Jervis’s arm, because he wasn’t in his cell. He was in Jervis’s cell, on Jervis’s cot, and Jervis was also on the cot. Somehow, he was still asleep.

“Mmph,” Jervis mumbled, his arm moving back up to Jonathan’s waist and clumsily attempting to pull him back down. Jonathan obliged, and nearly as soon as he’d laid back down, Jervis had latched onto him. Before, he’d been sleeping calmly, as spread out as one could be while sharing a twin bed, with his face buried in the pillow and an arm thrown over Jonathan. Now, he was pretty much hugging Jonathan, except they were lying down, and their knees knocked together. 

In the morning, if Jervis asked, Jonathan decided he would blame it on the nightmare. After all, there was absolutely no other possible reason for why he, instead of pulling away from the contact, slid an arm over Jervis to return the hug. Or why, when a loud snore emanated from the cell next to them, he flinched before carefully pressing his face into Jervis’s shoulder. 

For what felt like hours, Jonathan lay in the dark, and he thought he must have fallen asleep at some point because he opened his eyes to the faint glow of sunshine. Jervis was still asleep, but instead of them hugging each other, they’d rolled so that Jervis now practically lay on top of Jonathan. It really should have been uncomfortable, he thought. But he still didn’t move away. Instead, he resisted the impossible urge to somehow pull Jervis closer.

Jonathan had spent a long time alone. But he didn’t hate this. He actually kind of loved it. Jervis slowly woke up, and had the decency to look embarrassed and immediately move off of Jonathan, cheeks flushing a bright red. 

_Come back_, Jonathan immediately thought. He hoped Jervis couldn’t read minds in addition to the hypnotism, because that thought had sounded embarrassingly desperate.

“You took off your mask,” Jervis observed, sleep blurring the edges of his words. He reached up and pushed Jonathan’s hair behind his ear, and Jonathan felt something in his chest twist. 

“Yeah, I did,” he said, and he couldn’t keep the affection out of his voice. 

Jervis smiled softly as he said “Suits you.”

Jonathan was surprised by the sharp pang of want that went through his chest. He’d never wanted like that before. In the daylight, he remembered that the scarecrow didn’t hunt him anymore - he was the scarecrow, and he rejoiced on others’ fear. But that part of him seemed distant just now. He didn’t want Jervis to be afraid; he wanted him to reach over and hug him again, to lay down and fit their bodies together and hold him. 

He hadn’t kissed anyone in years. His last kiss had been disappointing, fifteen and awkward and fumbling. He wished he wasn’t afraid, so he could lean over and see what it would feel like to kiss Jervis. 

But he didn’t do that. He pulled his mask out from under the bed and put it on, hoping it hid the vulnerability and want that were all over his face. He was getting his cell back today, and he’d be on his own, like he’d always been. Like he should be.

And if he woke up the next night wishing he was back in Jervis’s cell, and if he felt his heart plummet when he realized there was no one in the bed with him, that was no one’s business but his own.

**Author's Note:**

> if you enjoyed, leave kudos or (even better) a comment, or come yell about hattercrow with me on tumblr @alpacasandravens ! Thanks for reading!!


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